Current wireless handheld mobile communication devices enable mobile professionals to stay current with information and communications, such as e-mail, corporate data and organizer information while they are away from their desks. A wireless connection to a server allows a mobile communication device to receive updates to previously received information and communications.
Many mobile professionals also require access to e-mail attachments when they are away from their computers. According to Delphi Forums, 80 percent of all corporate knowledge is stored in documents, so access to e-mail attachments is important.
Several solutions have been implemented to view attachments of various types on a mobile communication device. In one such implementation, a user may select to an attachment, say, by clicking on the attachment using a user interface input device (e.g., a thumbwheel) while viewing the e-mail message with which the attachment is associated. The user is then presented with a menu of options including an option to receive a “table of contents” and an option to receive the “full content”. Upon receiving an indication that the user has opted to receive the full content, the server transmits a scaled-down representation of the content of the document to the mobile communication device, where the representation is displayed by a viewer application. However, in such a representation, only an initial portion of the full content is displayed in the viewer application and, as the user navigates around the document, individual requests for further portions of the full content are transmitted to the server. The server transmits the further portions of the full content to the mobile communication device responsive to the receipt of each request.
Viewing a spreadsheet (or other large document) on the small screen common to many mobile communication devices can be difficult when using this attachment viewing implementation, as it is often necessary to navigate past a large percentage of the document in order to find the content that is of particular relevance. Users are typically not interested in viewing an entire document on the mobile communication device, preferring a large screen at a desktop computer for such viewing, but, rather, are concerned with quickly zooming in on an area of interest.
Spreadsheets can contain many rows and columns. Getting a sense for the scope and layout of the document using a small viewing device may be considered difficult and navigating to a region of interest can be slow and network-traffic intensive.